Elmo's Christmas Countdown "Countdown/I Hate Christmas"

My wife asked my 2 year old son if he wanted to write a letter to Santa.  His big sister had already done one, and he feels left out if you don't invite him to do whatever she does.

"I'll start," my wife told him.  "'Dear Santa . . .' Okay, now what do you want to tell him?"

"I hate Christmas!"

!!!!!!!!!!

Both my wife and I did a double take on this one.  Hate Christmas?  A 2 year old?

Then it clicked, and we kinda cracked up.

Of aaaallllll the Christmas specials my kids have viewed, their favorite is something I'd never heard of, prior to receiving it.  It's called "Elmo's Christmas Countdown."

I can't say that I've ever seen it on TV.  Or heard another person mention it.  But we've got it memorized in our house.

It stars the voice of Ben Stiller as Stiller The Elf and is chock full of mid-2000s stars (Ty Pennington!  Kevin James!) and mid-2000s references ("Heckuva Job, Brownie" and the Sopranos famous "fade to black" moment) and a slew of great songs from Sheryl Crow and Anne Hathaway and Jennifer Hudson.

And there are plenty of repeatable, Christmas-y quotables from the show, including:

"Elmo is making a Christmas Wish on a Christmas Star for a Christmas miracle!"  and "It's like Alicia Keys said, 'When things are at their darkest, that when you have to believe the most!"

But for whatever reason, my son latched on to the song sung by Stiller The Elf and Oscar The Grouch.

It's a classic back and forth style argument song, where Stiller tries to convince Oscar that he should be the one to "Count-down-Christmas" but Oscar sings back, using the same melody, "I-Hate-Christmas."

So that's where he got it from, and we think it's cute and it's silly and hopefully he won't repeat it outside the home, because if he did, that would be, to borrow a phrase from Oscar, a "pain in the King Wenceslas."



Hear the song on Youtube.

Gotye "Eyes Wide Open"

So here's the follow up post . . .

After writing about Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know" as a "phenomenon" song, the follow-up question in the follow-up post is . . . what do we think of the follow-up song?

Phenomenon songs don't have a great track record.  By definition, they probably can't . . .

Songs like Dido's "Thank You" caught on due to forces much larger than the song itself.  And those forces aren't in play on the second single.  Eminem couldn't have sampled Dido's "Hunter" too (which was her follow-up single to "Thank You").

Many of the phenomenon songs that stick out in my mind, like One Eskimo's "Kandi" and Primitive Radio Gods' "Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand", relied heavily on guest vocals (in both of these cases, sampled vocals) for their weird phenomenonic charm.

And other phenomenon songs just struck a particular, peculiar emotional chord, like Yael Naim's "New Soul" or Des'ree's "You Gotta Be."

Both of these traits apply to the first (successful) Gotye song.

And then there are phenomenon songs that herald the beginning of a long career, not unlike Sheryl Crow breaking through with "All I Wanna Do."

Gotye could go either way, building on early, surprise, massive success . . . or, just fading away.

The only way to answer the question, I guess, is to listen to the song . . .


Hear the song on Youtube.

Sheryl Crow "If It Makes You Happy"

Not every DJ can love every song that the station plays. And that’s alright.

Not every server in a restaurant loves every dish that gets ordered, right?

You realize that playing the song (serving the meal) isn’t about YOU the DJ, it’s about the person who wants to hear (or eat) it.

But every once and a while, you do go a bit crazy.

I’m going to leave the DJ in this story unnamed, and will only tell you that this story takes place many years ago, and the DJ stopped working for mvyradio not long after.

Not every DJ loves Sheryl Crow. I mean, she’s enormously popular (especially so, when this story takes place), but she does rub some people the wrong way, including this DJ.

The DJ would dutifully play “If It Makes You Happy” as part of mvyradio’s regular rotation, but at some point, comment could not be withheld.

Reserving this prank for times when the DJ was sure that the bosses weren’t listening, 2 things would get cued up.

One was “If It Makes You Happy.” The other was a sound effects CD.

When Sheryl would get to the chorus, and start reaching for that slightly screechy note, the DJ would bring up the sound effects disc, very low in the mix.

If you were listening to mvyradio at the time, you might have asked yourself:

“Is there a cat in that song?”

Yes, just under the surface of the song, faintly, but noticeably, would be the sound effect of a cat, mewling.

It’s a little shocking, how appropriate it sounds.

“IF IT MAKES YOU HAPPPYYYYYYYYY!”
“mmmmrrrreeeeeoooowwwwwwwwwwwww!”

You can try it yourself.

Start the Sheryl Crow video, and when it gets to the 1:08 mark, start the cat video.

And enjoy being a rebel DJ.



See the video on Youtube.


See the video on Youtube.

Sheryl Crow "Sign Your Name"

Good things will always come around again.

You can say all you want about his arrogance (No Terrence, your debut was not the best album since "Sgt. Pepper's") or about his middling career since that first record, but Terrence Trent D'Arby's "Introducing The Hardline..." was one of those records that people of all stripes liked back in 1987 and is totally worth revisiting and resurrecting in 2010.

Two examples isn't a full on trend, but Sheryl Crow and Jason Spooner have covered TTD this year.

I have no idea what the guy is doing now. And I'm not saying let's bring him out for a full comeback.

I'm just saying, go into the garage, get out your "Hardline" cassette, and remember how good it is.

Samples of Crow, Spooner and the originals:

Sheryl Crow “All I Wanna Do”

Seminal Moments . . .

There’s a fun, subtle moment in the movie “The Incredibles” really rang true for me.

Dash, the son in the family, is just discovering his superpowers as he is being chased by bad guys in flying vehicles. He’s running at superspeed when he suddenly looks down, and realizes that he’s not on hard land anymore. His superspeed is allowing him to run across water, skimming the surface of the ocean, without falling in.

With the realization, he smiles with delight, and runs even faster, accelerating beyond his pursuers.

In the Spring of 1994, I found myself suddenly working in radio. It wasn’t something I’d planned. I just kind of fell into it.

I’d always been a music lover, and had had a hobbyists interest in music programming. But I’d never really thought I’d be doing it as a career.

Sheryl Crow was this new, unknown artist, who had this cool, singer-songwriter tune out, called “Leaving Las Vegas,” and we played it. I liked it. It was interesting enough to make me go check out the album.

One listen to “All I Wanna Do” made me think, “Why is this not the single?” It was so catchy, accessible, breezy but deep and unlike anything else on the Top 40 Chart.

I played it for all my friends and became a champion of the song.

And when it became her second single, I said, “This is going to be a crossover, number one hit.”

But I have to tell you, that there was a part of me that was surprised, when it did, in fact, become a crossover, number one hit.

And it made me think that maybe I had stumbled into the right career. It propelled me forward, to start listening to more records, to try to find that breakthrough song and share it with people who love music.

I found my superpower, smiled, and accelerated.





This post is one in a series of Seminal Moments---stories of songs that truly changed the course of my life. For more posts in this series, click on the Seminal Moments link under "Labels."

This post is one in a series of Seminal Moments---stories of songs that truly changed the course of my life. For more posts in this series, click on the Seminal Moments link under "Labels."

Catherine MacLellan “Set This Heart On Fire”

How does a new song get into rotation on mvyradio?

It’s a complicated answer, honestly. Even after nearly a decade at mvyradio, I don’t think I can put into one clear sentence, how to describe “Our Sound.”

The closest I’ve come, in is our Philosophy Statement. But that is probably a fraction of the story.

Here are some things I CAN tell you.

mvyradio has a few thousand old songs in regular rotation. Meaning, a particular song gets played at least once every 3 weeks, all year round. These songs go back as far as the early-to-mid-60s, all the way up to about 6 months ago.

Anything in the last 6 months that you hear regularly on mvyradio, we call a “Current Song.” We keep about 50 Current Songs in rotation at once. If you were to listen to the station for 24 hours, you’d probably hear all of them at least once, a few of them twice, and the really, really popular ones might get three plays in twenty-four hours.

Every week, we take a couple of those Current Songs out of regular rotation. Sometimes they come out because they just don’t seem to be catching on. Often, it’s just because the song has run its course. And if the song was really popular, it can go into the regular rotation of older songs that might get played every couple of days, or every couple weeks.

And every week, we add a couple of new songs. If you go to the playlist page, you’ll see what’s been newly added to the Current Songs, on the right side of that page.

Two or three songs per week. It’s not many, considering all the choices out there.

I’m the station’s Music Director, which means I’m the last word on what we add. I take lots of input and suggestions from listeners, the other DJs, friends, the press, Record Labels and Promotions people. As a rule, I try to listen to anything someone asks me to seriously consider.

On an average week, I listen to anywhere from 50 to 100 songs, on my iTunes. Of all these tunes, only a couple per week make the cut.

Sure, we could add more, but the more you add, the less each one plays. So we settled on “about 50” as our target, thinking it was a pretty decent sized list, but was small enough to make sure that if you liked a song, you’d get to hear it enough.

There’s no real science to picking these songs, just a lot of factors. Starting with, Do I think it’s a good song? I can’t rely on that exclusively---lots of people like things that I don’t---but it’s a start.

Other questions include, “Are listeners asking for it? Is it an artist we regularly support? Is it finding success at other radio station around the country? Is it getting critical raves? Are people buying the record? What do the other DJs think?” and so much more.

And the big question is,“How does it fit into mvyradio?”

I ask myself, “Would this song sound good right after a Bruce Springsteen or Counting Crows or 10,000 Maniacs song?”

And then, I think about the playlist as a whole. A good, balanced list of Current Songs should include some very familiar artists like Bob Dylan, U2 and Sheryl Crow. And some new, up-and-coming artists in the same vein, like Catherine MacLellan or The Swell Season. There should be a few alternative artists, like The Decemberists and Bell X1, some blues musicians, like Robert Cray or Shemekia Copeland, and a few Americana acts like Neko Case and Levon Helm. It’s always nice to have an R&B tune, like something from Raphael Saddiq, and a good instrumental band, like Rodrigo Y Gabriela.

And the last question I ask is, “Do I think this song is good song? Good enough to keep people tuned to mvyradio?”

If the answer is Yes, then I’ll add it.

Lots of questions, not always clear answers, I know.

And here’s where you come in. Listener input makes a big difference. So let me pull back the curtain a little more.

Every Day I Write The Blog is mostly about the looking at songs from the past, and writing about what they make me think of.

But on a regular basis, I’m going to post new songs and ask you what YOU think.

Sometimes these songs will be tracks that have recently become Current Songs. Once a song gets into rotation, Listener Requests often determine if the song gets played a little or a lot.

Other times, I’ll post songs that are being considered. I’ll share with you my thoughts on the tune, but I’d love to hear if a) you like the tune, and b) if you think the song really belongs on mvyradio (“Hey Ya” by Outkast is a great song, but not a great mvyradio song).

Thanks for your help!

Here’s your first assignment.

This week we officially added a new Catherine MacLellan song. We had a really great visit from the Nova Scotian this summer and her first song “Take A Break” had a nice run. What do you think about her follow up?

Hear Catherine MacLellan “Set This Heart On Fire”